Words On Her Wrist
by Dancing Nebulas
Summary: Each person is born with a word, a sentence, or a phrase on their wrist. The word is the first significant thing their soulmate will say to them. Rose Tyler is born with a single word on the wrong wrist: Run. This single word defines her life, from the moment she was born to the moment a stranger takes her hand in a basement and speaks that single word, changing her life forever.
1. Nine

Rose Tyler grew up in a world where the first significant thing your soulmate would ever say to you was emblazoned on your wrist. It was not the first word, although sometimes it would be, but the first important thing they would say to you. It was a word that you would remember for the rest of your life.

When she had been able to read the words for the first time on, her left wrist instead of her right, where all of the other marks were written, she wondered. There was only a single word on her wrist.

A simple, declarative word, Run!

Her classmates had teased her about how simple the word was, about how generic and impossible it would be to find her soulmate because it was so common. That was the first time Mickey showed her both of his equally blank wrists. They had smiled and laughed over their common strangeness of their marks of lack thereof. They became inseparable after that day.

But something inside of her had always been tugged by those words; they made her want to try a little bit harder, to run a little faster, to get just a little farther. They pushed her to want better, and they told her that someday, somehow she would find her place in the stagnant world. And she would be running head long to meet it.

They were what had gotten her through Jimmy Stone, and what a mistake that had been. He had caught site of her wrist and had called out run. She though it must have been meant to be because every other person had been after him, in the frantic comparison of marks, but she had never said the words written on his wrist.

There had never been the feeling of rightness that her mother had described feeling when she was with her father.

When she had finally escaped, £800 in debt, a shattered heart, but an intact soul. She began to run once again, Jimmy had made her stand still and that was wrong, she was meant to be moving.

She was meant to be running.

So she ran, towards or away it didn't matter anymore, all she knew is that she had to run. She needed to get away from her stagnant world, with the dead end job, on the estate with her mother and her best friend/pseudo boyfriend.

It was that running that propelled her to a job at Heinrick's department store. It was there, in a store room full of shop dummies coming to life that a rough, calloused hand slipped into hers, and a deep voice with a Northern accent told her to run! That she knew she had finally found her soulmate.

It was in the form of a brooding, broken, Time Lord, with buzz-cut hair and a leather jacket that smelled of engine grease, and 800 someodd years older then her, but over time she felt herself begin to fall for him. He was her first Doctor and he always would be.

But she never told him about the mark, about the three letters on her wrist that spelled out the simple word that had defined her life, and now defined her relationship. She had asked him once if Time Lords had soulmates, and he had scoffed at her, telling her no that they had been above those things, but most species in the galaxy had some form of a "soulmate mark".

It was later, after a regeneration, and a Metacrisis that she learned he had lied. The words tattooed on that bodies wrist had been "There's me", and when she had said those words to him, after he had seen run on her wrist his heart has stuttered and had broken a little bit more. The universe had finally revealed the answer to the one mystery that had haunted him since he first woke up in this body, and had revealed it to be a cruel joke. Her Doctor told her it was because she was young, she was human, and she was still innocent that he could never have bared to go after her, he couldn't bring himself to taint something so precious with his own perceived filth.

There had been another thing that she had never told her first Doctor about. The day after their visit to Satellite Five she had awoken from a dream of pinstripes and hair, of beaches and heartbreak, to find the skin of left wrist beginning to darken. Underneath the word that defined their relationship was a longer another word began to form, although from the looks of it borderline run-on sentence then a single word. Each day it grew a little larger and a little less blurry, like a count down to something. What it could have been counting down to she didn't know. Until one day after Jack Harkness had come aboard and caught site of the second mark forming on her wrist.

He had laughed when he caught sight and upon seeing her bemused expression had explained, "You've got two soulmates sweetheart. The day you meet him or her the words will become clear. Odd that it's on you're left arm though."

Until the mystery day her countdown continued.

But it wasn't the countdown to what she had been expecting. Jack had been right about the part where she would meet her second soulmate, but he had been wrong that it would be a different person. He was the same man, but at the same time oh so very different.

She would remember the day that the words on her wrist became clear for the rest of her life because it was a day that was impossible to forget.

He had sent her home, and for a brief moment in time she had wondered if that was why she was developing the run-on sentence mark, because the Doctor was going to die?

Then she remembered what he had taught her, and she knew what she was going to do. She was going to save the man who was the reason she bore the word run on her wrist. She was going to run towards him instead of away from him.

She was going to save his life!

She had opened the heart of the Tardis, and for a brief moment became a goddess, she wiped the Daleks from time and space. She saved her beloved Captain, and with a broken heart she placed her curse on him for the good of the universe.

But the power was too much for her, and in an action that had been set in motion they had arrived on this place for the first time, he took the power from her and sacrificed his life for hers. When she had woken up on the floor of the console room she had been confused and disoriented. She had not truly understood what he had been trying to say, as he began to ramble.

When her beloved first Doctor had burst into golden light, the broken soldier who wore his pain on his face had started to heal became a new man. When her wrist began to burn and she had pulled back the sleeve of her hoodie in alarm, she finally understood as the words solidified, and formed.

He had changed and because of that the word on her wrist had changed, becoming multiple words. When a man with pretty boy looks and great hair emerged from the golden light her heart had broken because the man she had loved, the man who was her soulmate was gone.


	2. Ten

A new man had taken the place of her beloved Doctor. He was ranting and rambled, happily exploring himself but she couldn't remember the words caught in a daze of her own grief. And then he had said the words imprinted on her wrist, the one that told the story of the end of her old life, and the beginning of the lie she had always been running toward.

"The very first word I ever said to you. Trapped in that cellar, surrounded by shop window dummies, ooooh, such a long time ago. I took your hand, I said one word, just one word I said: Run!"

Those words being spoken, telling her that story, even in his unfamiliar voice made her realize exactly who he was, and with those words on her wrist both new and old she knew it could be not lie. And because of that her heart had broken in a whole new way as she was filled with a sense of betrayal, as well as the crushing feeling of loss and regret.

But they recovered, just like they always did. Her second Doctor defeated the Sycorax and in the process he showed her exactly the kind of man he was and the potential for the man that he would become.

He was both lighter and darker then her first Doctor. He would laugh, joke, and smile more easily then her first Doctor ever did, and because of that it became easier to relax around him and for him to relax around her. His guard would eventually begin to slip around her as their relationship began to change and morph from the firm friendship they'd had together when he was in his previous body to the more ambiguous relationship they shared by the end of her time with him. This is the relationship that would leave her questioning what she was to him in the end.

Her second Doctor also talked more, but he said less. He seemed to guard his heart a little more, some of his defences rebuilding, but she could still always see through him. Her second Doctor was also the one who broke her heart, first with the revelation of Sarah Jane, then by sending her away, and finally the first time at Bad Wolf Bay.

She had known that he was her second soulmate from the moment he had spoken those words, but like her first Doctor she never told him about the run on sentence on her arm below run. This one was much harder to hide, and later her Doctor would reveal that he often wondered why he had to take her to buy concealer so often.

There was a point where she wondered why she kept hiding it from him between Queen Victoria and the Werewolf and Sarah Jane. She wondered why she continued to hide the marks on her left arm. He knew she had none on her right because it had caused trouble more then a few times. Once in particular after her lack of a mark on her right wrist had nearly gotten burned at the stake on a particularly religious planet, which saw the absence of a mark as the sign of the devil. The Doctor had reassured her that it was a fluke, that when she was going to meet her soulmate the mark would fill in as a sort of countdown. She could see him trying to smile through the heartbreak in his eyes as he said those words.

She had gotten to her room and had been pouring the make-up remover onto a cotton pad, and about to swipe at her arm when she wondered if it was worth revealing the marks only to get rejected. She knew there was something between them, that she loved him, and perhaps he loved her, but was it worth risking their friendship, the one she valued most above all else, when they could never truly be together?

She hadn't been able to decide, and had ended up crying herself to sleep that night mourning something that she thought could never be. She didn't know until much later that the Doctor had been on the other side of the door caught in a fierce debate about whether to go into her room or not. They laughed at the irony of it all later because had he walked in that night he would have seen the words on her the skin of her forearm: the words that had permanently marked her as his soulmate. They might have been able to have at least some happiness before the heartbreak of their separation, although the pain may have only been greater in the end, at least they would have had the memories.

After she lost Mickey, she wondered again if it was worth keeping her marks hidden, because as it turned out the Mark that Mickey thought he would never have appeared the moment he landed in the alternate universe. He had taken it as a sign hat he belonged there. He left her alone, sending her back to the Doctor. His parting words still echo in her ear: _Tell 'im Rose he deserves to know._

She never did, not when they had landed on Krop Tor, not after the mess with Elton, not even after the Olympics.

When he had taken her to the planet with the things that looked like Pterodactyls, not even then could she find the courage to tell him, even as she promised him to stay with him forever. After those words she had seen him hesitate for a moment, his left hand fidgeting with the cuff of his right sleeve, before shaking his head and walking back toward the Tardis.

She stayed behind for a moment, admiring the scenery of one of his favourite planets, she couldn't help but wonder why he had taken her here. Later, when her Doctor took her there in their baby Tardis she found out exactly what he had planned to do that day, the same ring and all.

It was probably for the best in the end that her second Doctor had been a coward that day on the planet brimming with potential and only just starting because just as that planet was starting her world was being upheaved into something beyond recognition.

It was a story of the day that she died, and the story of how for the first time in her life became stagnant, standing still instead of running towards or away. It had happened so suddenly. One day she had been traveling with the Doctor, laughing and joking around as they explored a bizarre thousands of years in the future and galaxies away. The next day she had been banging on a white wall, begging to be taken back to her second Doctor. It had been a story that stared with ghosts that turned out to be Cybermen with a side of Daleks tossed in for good measure. It was a story of a world saved, but at to high a cost, three hearts shattered and two souls broken beyond recognition, crying out for the partner they would never see again.

It was a story that ended on a beach thousands of miles from the city she had always and never called home. It ended on a beach that bore a name she would not understand the meaning of until years later when her Doctor explained it to her. It was the place where she said goodbye and, although she didn't know it at the time, would one day again say hello.

It was the place where she said "I love you" to him for the first time.

It was where he had responded with, "Quite right too."

He had tried to be strong for her, but in the end she heard the quiver in his voice and had see the barely suppressed tears in eyes.

It was the story of her death because without his hand in hers she felt empty.

It was the day that the first two marks on her left wrist turned grey telling her that bond was shattered.

But it was also the day the skin of her right wrist began to darken.


	3. Metacrisis

She collapsed onto the sand that day on Bad Wolf Bay after he faded away those final words unspoken. She had to be helped back to Pete's Jeep and on the ride home only seemed to be able to cry.

When they got back to Pete's mansion all she could do was strip off her clothing and collapse into the bed that wasn't hers, in the room that wasn't hers, in a universe she didn't belong in. She stayed in bed and stared at the cream coloured wall for a week before Mickey came by and told her what he had meant by those words whispered in her ear all those months ago for her, and years for him.

"The Doctor lied about not havin' a mark," he had told her, "there was somethin' on his wrist. Found it when I was puttin' those jimjams on 'im."

She had rolled over to look at him then, about to open her mouth to ask him to go away but before she could he continued.

"It said 'Forever', Rose."

The most significant words they could ever say to each other, and of all the conversations, and all the words they had ever spoken to each other it was the impossible promise that she never should have made and he never should have accepted. The words on her wrist marked the beginning and his marked the advent of the end. She wanted to laugh, and she did for the first time in months she laughed.

Mickey had looked at her like she had grown a second head, but for the first time in a week she was able to throw off the covers on her bed and take a shower. She also changed her jimjams and sheets that day, it wasn't much but it was a start.

A week later she was out of bed and beginning to eat again a week after that she wandered around the mansion of her step-father for the first time, ideas already beginning to form in her head. If he couldn't find a way to her then she would get back to him, and this time they would not be separated again.

She began to work at Torchwood shortly afterwards began climbing through the ranks of the field agents at a pace that shocked everyone around her. She threw herself into work and into family, especially her baby brother, who went nameless for a week as her parents squabbled about what they should call the baby, in an effort to try and distract herself from her healing heart and broken soul.

She somehow managed to do all of this while she began to cobble together funding for a project that would send her back to her universe.

She somehow managed to recruit one of the agency's top scientists, Malcom Taylor, as well as the computer genius Tosh. Excited by the prospect of the challenge, and backed up by the tragedy of her story she convinced them to work for her And working with the jumpers as blue prints they began to secretly build something bigger and more powerful. Something that would be capable of sending her through to the other universe, preferably without ripping holes in the walls between.

But it would never work. They had invented long-range teleporter, albeit highly inaccurate, with some parts of the cannon, but that was the extent of its usefulness.

Until the day the stars began to go out.

It started with a few scientists noticing missing stars in the sky, but it was attributed to them simply burning out, or equipment issues. Then amateur astronomers began posting on some of the forums found in the bowels of the internet, conspiracy theories about the stars going out and the world ending because of it. As more stars disappeared more people began to notice, from the astronomers to the everyday person, and the world began to panic.

At first none of this really registered with her. She was working 12-hour days at Torchwood and growing up in smoggy London she never took much notice of the stars under her home sky. Now she couldn't bring herself to look up for fear that the sight of the stars would only bring with them summering.

It wasn't until one day when, after they conducted another round of tests did they realize that Mr. Tedopolis the teddy bear was nowhere to be found in the target range. She knew then that something had gone horribly wrong and when Malcom and Tosh had gone back and examined the canon, they told her it had begun to work. It was shortly after that they discovered the walls between universes were beginning to break down and somehow that was linked to the stars beginning to go out.

Suddenly the funny little side project they had been working on during their free time became the focus of Torchwood. The cannon went from a group of three to an entire team devoted to running and maintaining it. Pete and Rose had already agreed that there was only one hope for the universe and that would be to find the Doctor and to find out what was happening.

So the jumps began.

And with it her third mark began to clear. It both lightened her heart and broke it as well because it meant she knew it meant she would find the Doctor again one day, but it also meant that he had or would regenerate again.

She firmly resolved to herself that it wouldn't matter; she would love this new man just as she had loved the last two. Doubts also plagued her, about what the end of that sentence was meant to have been.

She shoved it all to the side. She could worry about it all after the multiverse had been saved, or at least that's what she told herself.

She kept jumping, and with each jump the cannon was refined, and her mark grew clearer. It was smaller this time, not the sentences of her last one. It probably meant that her new Doctor would be a little quieter then her second. She smiled sadly as she traced the slowly clearing pigmentation during a slow moment between jumps. She would miss her second Doctor's gob, and his really great hair.

But she didn't allow herself to dwell as she was called, and once again sent through the void.

The moment she landed she knew something about this universe was different. It felt familiar. And when she looked up she saw no Zeppelins in the sky. For the first time in a long time she smiled as a whoop of joy escaped from her lips. This was her universe; the one she called home!

She was pulled back soon afterward by control, and she let them know that they had found the right universe. After so many different places, many of them hellish nightmares, she couldn't help but feel glad for the first time in a long time.

But her joy was short-lived as each jump back proved unsuccessful. It began to drain her spirit as she landed on different planets in different times and places as they tried to track the Tardis and the Doctor.

Eventually she landed back in London around her time. She could see a crowd out of the corner of her eye gathered and she walked over to it, trying to see beyond the police tape, but she couldn't see through the thick crowd. A redheaded woman came over to her and began explaining about keys, a bin, and a woman named Sylvia.

Still no sign of he Doctor, but she could have sworn for just a moment as she walked away she heard the familiar grinding metal-on-metal of the Tardis as she walked away.

Soon after Tosh refined the algorithm they used to track the Doctor, and she began to land on planets just before or after she had arrived. Each time ate away at her a little bit more, but it bolstered her as well because with each jump the mark became clearer, a message that she was getting closer and that she would find him soon enough.

Things in the other universe got desperate, more and more of the stars were disappearing from the sky.

They began to try and send video message through, but nothing was ever successful.

Then all hell broke loose; as something began to happen to the woman the Doctor was travelling with her timeline cut abruptly short, as well as the rest of the world's. She had became trapped in another universe within the original universe, a bubble or a pocket is how it was explained to her. The universe needed to be set right and so it became up to her to do so.

So she did. She became the closest thing she could to the Doctor that the universe was missing in order to set things right.

And it was hell.

She cried herself to sleep the night she arrived back home for the loss of the Doctor, for sending all those innocent people to death in order to keep Donna alive just so they could send her to slaughter when the time came that they would need her.

The only thing that kept her sane during those long days and nights was the fact that she had to set this right. She had right this universe in order to have a chance to save all the people who had died and to prevent the death of a much larger group of people.

She could atone after this was over, after the multiverse was saved because getting back to the Doctor had to become a secondary priority to her or else she would loose her mind mourning him.

No matter how much her soul screamed for its other half, or felt dead in the world where he wasn't.

Another small consolation was that she could also see her mark becoming clearer. The words were still fuzzy but she could make out that there were three of them now. All short words. And it was cradling that wrist to her forehead that she finally fell asleep on the night she returned to the universe that she was supposed to be calling home now.

She knew from the clarity of the mark that it would only be days or weeks until she found him, likely changed again before her eyes.

It wasn't the next jump, or the one after that, it was the third jump when she finally found her universe as it descended into hell. An Earth with planets in the sky and unknown ships entering the atmosphere or whatever was holding the atmosphere in place.

It had begun.

She had walked down that street, running towards the problem instead of away just as she had done her entire life.

When she saved Donna's mother and grandfather from a Dalek and then saw Jack, Sarah-Jane, Harriet Jones, and the unknown woman she could only laugh in relief when she saw finally saw his face on camera, after the entire world had called him. When his face appeared on the camera it was still the same, and Donna was there with him just as she was supposed to be.

Oh how she had missed that face!

But of course the laptop had no webcam. She couldn't let him know that she was back and that she was okay.

Then it all went pear-shaped as a man appeared on the screen. She still needed to warn him about the stars going out, and to finally tell him about the marks on her wrists and arm.

When she exited and asked for a shift from command it was granted and suddenly she found herself in the middle of a deserted road, abandoned cars the only thing between her and him. She had felt the beginning of a smile as she dropped the heavy gun from around her shoulders. Donna was with him, but his back was turned to her until it wasn't anymore. She saw him turn around to face her and suddenly she was running and he was running and then a Dalek shot him. It was in that moment that She knelt down next to him as she told him that she was back and that she was there. She wanted to say so much more but it got caught in her throat.

They got him back to the Tardis in time, but the words left her mouth before she could stop them, practically begging him not to change

So he hadn't instead he redirected the energy into his spare hand.

Before she could stop herself she was in his arms holding him as tightly as she could. She felt him squeeze her right back.

"We need to talk," he had whispered in her ear as he pulled her closer to him.

"After we save the world," she replied as he let her go.

In the rush that followed she had never noticed how her wrist had never burned the way it had the first time, and the way it should have burned again as he changed or failed to.

He wrist did burn though, later when they were on the Dalek crucible as the Tardis was supposedly destroyed, but she only gripped his hand harder because he needed the support more then she did. He had lost his best friend, the only piece of his home that he had left, and they were about to loose their battle with the Daleks. All she could have done was support him in their final moments.

It was when the Tardis reappeared and she saw another version of him run out of the Tardis holding some kind of gun-type thing and making a mad dash at Davros that she understood. She knew she was looking at the man who would speak the words on the mark that had just filled in.

It was after towing the Earth and their triumph that the Doctor made mention of last trip to Bad Wolf Bay and when he refused to meet her eye she knew what he was planning to do. No time for a talk and no time for an explanation. She played with the skin on her right wrist, knowing that it would say the words that one of them would speak, but she didn't dare peak.

When they left the Tardis and her mother began to complain about being stranded in bloody Norway she knew that she had to ask, even after she had listened to the speech by the other Doctor, even knowing that "life with you" was probably written on her. She needed to know how that sentence was going to end even if only for the sake of closure.

So she asked, and the Doctor answer with "does it need saying?" and so she turned to the other one. The one that was part human and could spend the rest of his life with her and asked him, "What about you Doctor? How was that sentence going to end?"

He surprised her by walking over to her and leaning down to whisper the words, "I love you."

She pulled back and for only a moment she hesitated before she grabbed him by the lapels of his blazer and kissed him with everything she had. It was both their first kiss and their third, and it was also a feeling for the first time in her life that she was complete.

It was only when she heard the wheezing-groaning of the Tardis departing that she broke away from him, and ran towards where the Tardis had been. She could feel her heart breaking all over again, just like it had when he regenerated because he had left without saying goodbye, but even now she felt her soul slowly beginning to put itself back together.

She felt a familiar hand slip into hers and when she looked up at him, at the man wearing the face she loved so much she closed her eyes and put aside her pain. It could be dealt with later because for now she needed to say something to her soulmate.

"I love you."

As soon as those words had left her mouth she saw the Doctor, _her Doctor,_ smile as his eyes became alight with joy. He reached over and pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to reveal those exact words scrawled on his right wrist. Rose looked down at the sleeve of the Tardis blue leather jacket before doing the same on her own wrist, revealing the same words: I love you.


End file.
